


Shining Star

by Leopardmask



Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Multiple Voices, Sensory Deprivation, Sensory Overload, Temporary Character Death, Wither - Freeform, lost souls - Freeform, threat of permadeath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27820090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leopardmask/pseuds/Leopardmask
Summary: There was a costume party coming up, and Beef was going to be the star of the show.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 60





	Shining Star

**Author's Note:**

> TWs:   
> -Mind the tags for general stuff :)  
> -Dead body killed by wither. I tried to be as vague as I could - the imagery makes me uncomfy too - but if you’re still concerned, skip the paragraph that starts “Etho dropped to his knees”.  
> -Sensory overload - Paragraph “So much assaulted Beef’s senses...” and a much less panicked form in the paragraph with “A breeze in his hair.”

Beef laid out the materials and rubbed his hands together. There were still a few more days before the costume party, but he had an incredible idea and wanted to test it out to make sure it would work. It involved basically covering himself in soul sand, and he hoped it wouldn’t get TOO messy.

The stuff stuck to him like mud. This was a good sign - that meant it wouldn’t all fall off at the slightest jostle. He giggled, looking at himself in the mirror, covered in soul sand from the neck down. He looked ridiculous.

This wasn’t the full look, though. Beef grabbed a wither skull and carefully put it on over his head. Already much scarier! He picked up another one and played with it, talking as he moved its mouth like a puppet. He laughed again and picked up the third skull in his other hand.

He cried out as a horrible sound pounded into his chest. He staggered, tripped, but instead of falling, he found himself lifted off the ground by the soul sand that was quickly hardening into a cage - a  _ rib  _ cage - around his chest. The sand encasing his legs jerked them uncomfortably backward. Blue light flashed in his vision. Beef thrashed furiously to get free, but the black bones only tightened around him. They dug into his clothes, his skin. He felt himself tiring, his energy draining. Somewhere, he knew what was happening, and regretted ever thinking this was a good idea. But that thought, like all the others, started to fade. Other things started to swirl in.

The Wither, ready to fight, let loose its first explosion. The force and sound ripped through the hacienda. With the last of his energy, Beef let out a scream, then blacked out.

\-----

<impulseSV> Who just summoned a wither?

<BdoubleO100> That wasn’t you?

<impulseSV> No... 

<impulseSV> Our shop was stocked, last I checked. No need for me to summon more.

<joehillssays> Well, good luck to whomever it may be.

For the next few minutes, business continued as usual. There was no answer on who summoned the Wither, but it was assumed that they just had their hands full fighting it and couldn’t look at a communicator.

<Keralis1> Uh oh. Hermits, we have a problem.

<Keralis1> That wither we heard is flying free.

<Keralis1> And it’s in the middle of VintageKebab’s base!

<Welsknight> That’s... bad.

<Xisuma> Oh dear. If the Wither escaped, that might mean he needs some backup. I’m omw

<Etho> I’ll come too

<Welsknight> I’ll meet you there.

When Etho and Xisuma arrived, Wels was already there, looping around, trying to keep the Wither distracted and lure it away from the buildings and scurrying villagers. Oddly, Beef himself was nowhere to be found. Together, the three harried the Wither and drove it northwest, to an empty patch of forest and plains. All skilled fighters, they quickly brought the Wither down, Etho dealing the final blow with a Smite-enchanted axe.

The Wither crackled, hissed, and disintegrated away, leaving behind its nether star and- a body?

Etho dropped to his knees. Xisuma and Wels rushed forward. It looked like just another wither skeleton at first, beyond recognition, and totally black - except for the torn, half-rotted white apron.

Xisuma gasped. Wels shuddered and turned away, looking sick. Etho just stared. As the seconds, minutes ticked by, and the body didn’t vanish, Etho turned his gaze to Xisuma. Xisuma, who had been flicking frantically through communicator, chat, and admin panels, turned to Etho with a haunted expression, and slowly shook his head. Etho didn’t often broadcast his emotions, but that simple shake of the head broke him. He put his own head down and started to cry.

Through his tears, a glimmer on the ground caught his attention. The nether star. Etho picked it up, running his thumb over the smooth faces. “Can-” Etho’s throat closed again. He coughed. “Can I keep this? As a- a memory.”

Xisuma nodded and stood up. “Go ahead. I think he’d like that. I’ll take care of... of...”

“Thank you.” Without another word, Etho held the star close to his chest and flew home, leaving Xisuma to his work.

\-----

Everything was chaos.

So much assaulted Beef’s senses that he could barely remember what was happening. He had been unconscious for a moment, and before that... what? All he knew was light and movement and noise. Voices whispered and screamed at him. He - they - were floating in the air. Too much to see. Too much for one mind to process. Fortunately-unfortunately, there were many minds here. Explosions. Sounds. Across their - his? - insane-too-much-all-around vision, blue lights danced. There was energy in those lights. He - they -  _ wanted _ that energy. Wanted to destroy the lights, to take it for themselves.

One blue light was brighter than the others. It flew, darted around his/their heads, peppered him/them with arrows. Two more bright lights joined it. He/they tried to fight back, but the attacks from the lights were starting to hurt. He/they felt a final blow to the spine send bad  _ very bad _ magic through them. With a horrible, painful noise, Beef felt his/their senses dwindle, sight flicker, hearing dull, until nothing was left but him and the whispers.

He could still feel touch, a little bit. He could tell he was being... carried? A voice murmured from outside the confines of the mindspace. It was soothing, and grounding, and oh so achingly familiar, but Beef couldn’t quite place who it was. 

He was carried for a while, he thought. Time was impossible to count in this “space”. And then, he wasn’t. He wondered where he was. The Others, as he had already begun to refer to the whispering souls, didn’t seem to care.

There was nothing. Nothing but the Others. He tried “talking” to them sometimes. To his surprise, they often replied, but they never had much to say. They didn’t remember their stories. They didn’t have names anymore. Their presence pressed at him sometimes, as if trying to push  _ his _ name away. He had a name! He had a name, and friends outside, and... As a retort against the Others, he tried to give them names. He named them after his llamas, his cats. But he could never tell them apart. There were too many, and each was too fleeting.

Beef clung to the voice outside as a lifeline. What was “outside”, anyway? What could be “outside” and “inside” if, as far as he knew, there was no space? But this voice wasn’t one of the Others, he knew. It wasn’t a constant presence, but it was there just often enough to keep Beef from slipping completely into the tide of souls.

And so it went. He talked to the Others. He listened to the friendly voice. He thought about things, but then ran out of things to think about. He was tired. Was there sleep here? Maybe. Maybe, the Others whispered. He drifted. They drifted.

Until a jolt startled them. They had fallen, maybe? Something shifted.  _ Chest, chest, _ a few souls whispered.  _ Stored away. Out. Away. Out! _

Something was happening.

\-----

Etho hung the nether star in an item frame, in pride of place in his base. He passed by every day, and every time he passed he greeted it. “Hey, Beef. I...” He rarely knew what to say. He talked anyway. Telling the star what he’d done that day, what he’d built. Talking about how Keralis - Keralis! - had offered to help fix the damage at the hacienda. Sharing news about everything that was happening.

One night, Etho was up late. He walked out to chat. As he reached the area where he kept his mementos, a phantom’s screech startled him. Etho tripped, reached out to steady himself, and knocked the nether star off the wall. He quickly grabbed it before anything could happen. 

A chest might be safer. He put the star in, then realized a moment too late that some other nether stars were in the chest too, stacked. Frantically, Etho dove for the special one - then realized that it wasn’t even trying to magically “stack” to the others. He inspected it. If one didn’t know its history, this nether star seemed no different from any other. And yet...

One possibility leaped out at him. He stuffed the star into a vest pocket and fumbled for his communicator. 

<Etho> -> <Xisuma> XISUMA

<Xisuma> -> <Etho> ?

<Xisuma> -> <Etho> You can’t sleep either, then?

<Etho> -> <Xisuma> I think I discovered something

<Etho> -> <Xisuma> Come to my base

As soon as he saw Xisuma land, Etho ran over and held out the nether star. “Scan this.”   
  


Xisuma raised an eyebrow. “What am I scanning for?”

“Anything unusual. Especially Player information.”

“Etho...”

“I’m dead serious, X. There’s something about this star that makes it different from the others in my base, and if I’m right-”

Xisuma sighed and took the nether star. He typed a quick command on his helmet, letting data sweep across the visor.

His head snapped up to give Etho a shocked look. “Oh, my days.”

“You found something, didn’t you?”

“I- I did.” Xisuma turned the star over in his hands. “Oh my goodness me. I never even suspected...” He held up the nether star between them. “That’s... that’s him.”

“So the question now is,” Etho pondered, “can we get him back?”

That question, as it turned out, required waking up Impulse, the closest they had to a Wither expert. He yawned his way over to Etho’s base and stumbled to a landing. “Hey guys,” he greeted groggily. “So what’s up? You said you needed to know something about a nether star?”

“Yeah,” Xisuma confirmed. “Namely, how can a nether star end up... trapping... a Player?”

That startled Impulse awake. “Wait, wait wait wait. A Player,  _ inside _ a- wait. Is this about-”

Xisuma nodded and handed over the star. Impulse took it reverently. “That’s... I mean, I’ve never heard of that happening, but I guess in theory it totally could. Withers are... they’re basically made up of a bunch of souls. Ones that were trapped in the soul sand used to summon it. And I think the star is, like, all those same souls, compressed down? The ones in soul sand are usually pretty old, but if a Player soul somehow got trapped-”

“-Inside a Wither,” Etho finished. “That’s how we... found him. We were wondering if it was possible to... free the souls from a nether star?”

“I really don’t know,” Impulse admitted. “I’d never really thought about that before. I always thought they were just... energy, at that point. Waiting to be used. Maybe...” He shook his head.

“We can work with a maybe,” Xisuma prompted. “What’s your idea?”

Impulse took a deep breath. “Smashing the nether star.”

There was a long silence. “I hate it,” Etho finally said. “But it’s our only lead. And whether it works or not, it has to be better for him than being in Wither purgatory for all eternity.”

Xisuma nodded. Impulse placed the star on the ground and stood back. Xisuma raised his sword.

“Does that sword have Smite on it?” Impulse asked suddenly.

“No?” Xisuma replied. “Should it?”

“I... I think Smite would be bad, actually. So, uh, carry on.”

Xisuma held the handle of the sword above his head, tip angled straight downward. He slammed the sword down as hard as he could. The nether star shattered in a flash of light.

\-----

They were being held again. Passed around. Murmurs from outside. The Others weren’t happy. They were resting before. Why couldn’t they rest? Beef found himself almost agreeing. He had just started to accept this existence.

The nice voice was there, with one - no, two others. The conversation was muffled, as always. Everyone was holding them. Then, no one was.

Then, their existence exploded.

Light! Light! Bright! Beef wanted to close his eyes, but he had none to close. Souls screamed and rushed around him.  _ Free! Free! _

And then, blackness again. Or maybe grey. Most of the whispers were gone, but a few danced around him still, pulled into a new limbo: one more familiar to Beef, but not a place anyone usually stayed long enough to notice.

It  _ hurt. _ Why did it hurt? It was supposed to just happen. Time wasn’t supposed to exist in this space, but it took time to... to pull him together. To re-form what had been lost around him. It seemed to go on and on. Like the world wasn’t sure what to do with him anymore.

Finally, a breeze in his hair. The sound of water. Sand. Not the Nether kind, clinging like mud, but  _ sand,  _ rasping against his skin. All over him. Itching. He could feel his clothing around him, and in the gaps, more sand. A few whispers still bounced around in his head. Not as much light as before, but still-too-bright light shone on him. He felt its heat. It reflected off the ground into his eyes. The wind rustled against him again. It was a calmer chaos than... than... it was calm. And yet still too much. He curled up as tightly as he could to block it all out.

His pocket buzzed. What was that? Oh yeah - a communicator. Beef uncurled just enough to take it out and hurl it across the sand. No buzzing.

“Oh, gosh.” That voice. He knew it. A soft voice. Calming. Grounding. He understood the words now. That was nice. “Are you- what am I saying, of course you’re not okay.”

Beef flinched away from a touch. “Hey, hey,” the calm voice soothed him. “Sorry to startle you. It’s only me.”

He risked opening his eyes a crack. Much of the harsh light was being blocked now. It took him a second to process what he was seeing. Light above. Dark below. Eyes in between. One dark, one red.

“E-” he croaked. He hadn’t used his voice in... how long had it been?

Etho grinned so widely that his mask moved with his smile. He handed Beef a bottle of water.

Beef took it, felt the smooth glass in his hands. He was getting used to his senses again. He uncurled slightly, took a sip, and tried again. “Etho.”

“You remember me!” Etho replied, only half joking.

Beef took another sip of water and tried to sit up. “How could I ever forget?” Something was still weird about his voice. Despite the two of them sitting on an island in the open ocean, it sounded like there was a faint echo as he talked.

They sat at worldspawn for a long time, watching the morning pass by. Beef slowly uncurled from his defensive position, sat up, and stretched.

Etho stood up and offered his hand. Beef took it, pulled himself up on shaking legs... and fell.

“That’s fine,” Etho said. “We can take a boat. I’m guessing you don’t want to go through the Nether right now anyway.”

Beef shook his head vehemently. “No Nether.”

“It was you all along,” Beef commented, as Etho pushed off from the island.

“Me? What did I do?”

“You talked. I got so close to losing myself, and every time, you started talking to me. It... it really helped.”

“You could actually hear me in there?”

“Sort of. No idea what you were saying, though.”

  
  
  


Beef frowned as Etho started to steer the boat up a river. “Wait, where are we going?”

“My base,” Etho answered. “While I’m sure pretty much anyone would be super excited to know that you’re alive and would love to host us for a bit, I don’t want to impose. And your place isn’t fixed back up yet. There’s probably a draft. We, uh, didn’t think you’d come back... We’re working on it, though.”

It was almost night time again by the time Etho got Beef into the base. He steered Beef into the tranquility room and set down a bed. “You can stay here as long as you need to.”

Beef gratefully lay in the soft bed. He closed his eyes. Then he opened them again. “It’s going to be hard to sleep.”

Etho sat on a block. “I’ll be here.”

“Thank you. It’s just...” Beef paused. It’d make him sound crazy. Wouldn’t it? But he had noticed what they were doing to his voice, and he was sure Etho must have noticed too. “Others. Voices... whispers?”

“Souls,” Etho supplied quietly.

“I guess so, yeah. Most of them left when... when it went bright and I started respawning. But a few got pulled through or something and they’re still in my head...”

“It’s your mind, you own the place.” A smile tugged at Etho’s eyes. “Can you tell them to shut up?”

Beef chuckled. “I could try.”

Etho reached for his communicator, a sudden idea forming. “In the meantime, I think I know who might be able to help a bit...”

  
  
  


A few minutes later, Cub and Scar arrived and sat by Beef’s bed. Etho made a quiet exit to let them talk. He leaned against a pillar of his base and let out a sigh. What a week it had been. He hadn’t asked Beef about his experience yet, of course - Beef would talk about it when and if he was ready. Not many hermits had even gotten the news yet that Beef was alive. As soon as that got out, he would be inundated with visitors, like it or not. It was obvious that Beef had been through something that would stick with him for a very long time - but however long it took, the hermits would stick with him too.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: this fic was actually inspired by a single joke in one of _Ren's_ streams way back in late October. I... don't honestly remember the exact reason I switched it to Beef instead.


End file.
